Why Getting Everything You Want Still Feels Empty — with Jamie Smart

What if the clarity, confidence, and peace of mind you've been searching for were already inside you? In this episode, Richard Reid sits down with bestselling author, coach, and keynote speaker Jamie Smart to explore why so many high-performers feel stuck - and the surprisingly simple shift that changes everything. As Jamie puts it, clarity is your mind's natural state. The problem isn't that you don't have it. You've simply been taught a misunderstanding of how your mind works.

Jamie shares how he went from running large IT projects to discovering principles for psychology that he believes are as fundamental as the discovery of germs was to medicine. From a client who more than doubled his business turnover after a three-day intensive, to the Harvard Business Review research linking calm, happy states to peak performance, this episode is packed with insight on what truly drives results in business and life.

Key Takeaways

Your experience is created from the inside out — not by external circumstances.

Happiness, wellbeing and clarity are internally generated, not dependent on achievement, relationships or bank balances.

Entrepreneurs often mistake what they've built for the source of their success, when the real source is the mindset that built it. Over 93% of 700+ senior executives performed at their best when calm, happy and energised.

Clarity is your mind's natural state. Overthinking fills it - understanding clears it.

Episode Highlights

Jamie's journey from IT project manager to Sunday Times bestselling author. 

The "Ian formula" - how subtracting misunderstanding unlocks creativity and freedom.

The rope bridge metaphor - navigating AI, exponential change, and humanity's future.

Timestamps

• 00:00 Welcome and Introduction
• 01:00 Jamie's background and career pivot 
• 04:27 The inside-out nature of experience 
• 18:20 The three steps to real change 
• 29:34 Reception in coaching and therapy communities 
• 33:48 The future — AI, exponential thinking, and the rope bridge 
• 38:00 Where to find Jamie Smart

🔗 Connect With Jamie Smart 

Website: www.JamieSmart.com

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jamiesmartclarity/ 

YouTube: www.youtube.com/clarityjamiesmart

⭐️ Connect And Subscribe

Thank you for joining us on The Business of Thinking podcast. If you enjoyed this conversation, please subscribe and leave a rating! It helps us bring more insightful content on the psychology of high performance. Find more about Richard Reid's work at www.richard-reid.com.

Download the first two chapters of Richard's "Charisma Unlocked", audio or PDF version for free and begin your transformation towards authentic charisma: https://richard-reid.com/master-authentic-charisma/

Production Credit: Edited and produced by @the32collective_ / https://www.the32collective.co/

Transcript

SPEAKER_03 0:04

Welcome to the Business of Thinking podcast. This is the place for high achievers who want more than motivation. They want master. Here we skip the surface level talk and go straight into the psychology of high performance.

SPEAKER_00 0:21

Hi, and welcome to the Business of Thinking again. My name is Richard Reed, and today I'm joined by Jamie Clark. Jamie's an author, he's the coach and a keynote speaker, and he's got some interesting ideas around this topic of coaching. And we'll go into those very shortly. But first and foremost, Jamie, welcome. Fantastic to have you here.

SPEAKER_02 0:41

Great to be here, Richard. Thanks for inviting me.

SPEAKER_00 0:44

So maybe we start by just talking a little bit about you, your background, how it is that you've arrived at the kind of work that you're doing. And then we'll go into some of that work in a little bit more detail. Does that sound okay?

SPEAKER_02 0:55

Yeah, sure, sure. Shall I just kick off?

SPEAKER_00 0:58

Yeah, please do.

SPEAKER_02 0:59

So my background was running uh large, basically IT projects and programs for organizations, which I did for many years. And I was good at it, but I sensed that there was something else for me. And I went on like a personal development weekend one weekend, and I saw this uh trainer at the front of the room working with groups, coaching people, that sort of thing. I was like, that's what I want to do. And I was terrified of public speaking. So I was like, well, that's uh that's inconvenient, but we'll we'll get that hand. It's a very, very simple. Yeah, yeah. So I went on that journey and I started my own business and did very, very well with that and was had a uh basically a uh education bit an online education business through you know 2003 through uh 2009. And then in 2009, I was I read The Four Hour Work Week by Tim Ferriss, which you may be aware of. I was like, it actually was 2008, I was like, that's what I need to do. I need to go on mini retirements and that sort of thing. So 2008, I'm on my first mini retirement three-month ski holiday in Whistler, and I'm like, this is gonna be great. I'll be great at skiing and I'll have bragging rights and I'll feel so successful that I'll have sun shining out of all my orifices. And it didn't work like that. And I I was sort of miserable, off purpose, like enjoying the skiing, but like this, I and the funny thing is, Richard, according to the rules of my industry, I should be the happiest man on earth. And I'm like, well, what's wrong with this picture? And so I went back to the drawing board and I hired a coach and he said, Okay, make a list of your goals, your big goals. And they were things like, oh, go powder skiing in Kat Man Do. If Whistler hadn't done it, I just need a test. Yeah, but various things. And he said, Okay, now go through and put a line through any of those objectives that aren't based on the idea that you'll feel better when you do them. Like the I'll be happy when. And that had me cross all the goals off my list. Because I was running a pattern which is I'll be happy when I, or I'll be fulfilled once I've achieved that, or I'll be happy when I've uh got this kind of relationship or got the business up to this kind of turnover and that sort of thing. And it it was a natural trap. I've always had that kind of entrepreneurial spirit, which is about seeing the future and wanting to create something, which is great. But I'd built in without knowing it a fundamental misunderstanding of the mind. So in this work, I started exploring what he was pointing at. And I had an insight. And the first insight was oh, everything you've been looking for outside of you is already there within you. Now I don't mean like cool shoes and wristwatches and nice holidays. I mean the experience of peace of mind, well-being, fulfillment, happiness, love, satisfaction, those are internally generated. And I kind of knew this, right? Because we all know that, you know, happiness comes from within and stuff. But it was like I was operating uh uh a game plan for life that somehow didn't incorporate that. So that that immediately started reorganizing my to-do list, right? Like if my happiness and well-being isn't dependent on external circumstance, then that reorganizes your priorities. My next insight was oh, the fact that a person can even see or hear or feel or perceive means they have this source of resilience, realization, and transformation already there within them, which was a game changer for me. All of a sudden, it immediately made me way more hopeful for all my coaching clients and changework clients and that sort of thing. And and so I started reorganizing how I worked with people. And then, but the big game changer came about six months later in uh June 2009. And I suddenly realized, oh, what we're working with here, these are principles for psychology. This is to psychology what the discovery of germs was to medicine. And literally that morning I called up my team, I said, we're we're changing direction. There's principles for psychology. Let's go. And that's what I've been doing ever since. That's what had me wrote my wrote my first book, Clarity and Sunday Times Bestseller Results. That's what I teach everyone from therapists to psychiatrist to coaches to uh CEOs of uh blue chip companies to entrepreneurs, is about an innate capacity for resilience and realization and transformation that's there within us all. And uh it's it's so interesting, Richard, because in like our intellects, which is the intellect's a very powerful tool, but it's a sucker for additive advice. Like you know, and every magazine knows this on the cover, they go five tips to washboard abs or uh red hot sex life or uh to make wealth this year or whatever. It's always five to seven tips, and it and you read them, and you're like, oh yeah, that's obvious, duh. But then you don't implement them. Why? Because implementation requires more of a of an upgrade to your psychology. And and I see this all the time. I'll ask entrepreneurs, when do you get your best ideas? And the answers are always the same. When I'm just about to fall asleep, when I'm in the shower, when I'm on holiday, when I'm driving to work, when I'm outside. They the the information that makes a genuine go-forward difference in our lives inevitably comes from this capacity for realization that we all have from within us. So that's what I've devoted my life to. And uh yeah, so far it's a wild ride.

SPEAKER_00 7:01

Fantastic. We'll talk more about that wild ride in a moment, but I mean it sounds like a lot of what you're studying is about it's about creating space and creating time for reflection and for influences to come in. So some of it is is very sort of counterintuitive to how people tend to operate, which isn't it, which is very busy packing as much as you can into your time. How do you sort of um deal with people's resistance to the idea of that?

SPEAKER_02 7:28

Well, it in answer to what you said about creating time and space for reflection, yes and no. Let me let me address it. The the here's how I think about it. There are two basic kinds of things you can learn and apply in your life. One is additive advice, and other is stuff that I call subtractive. Stuff that's additive gives you more to think about, more to do, more to work on, more to memorize. Subtractive stuff actually gives you less to think about, takes stuff away. So I'll give you an example. When I was five years old, I used to watch my dad. My dad had a VW bunk, and I would sit in the back of the car and I'd watch him, and I was like, this is impossible. He'd be like changing gears with one hand, he'd be steering, he'd be moving the car around on the road. I was five years old, I'm like, this is impossible. How can anyone ever learn to do that? What is he, how does he even know what to do? But what was invisible to me was his understanding of all the relationships between all those elements, which is an embodied learning. It's not a concept, it's not an intellect, it's embodied. So because he understood that, he could do it effortlessly, like while tuning in the radio. It took no effort at all. What I'm suggesting is that it's possible to get an embodied understanding of how your mind works, how your perception works. And once you have that, it's effortless to navigate it. You don't have to take an hour out every week to think about it. You the ability to calibrate your mind and how you're using it is effortless and real time. So while while the the reason I use the example of when do you get your best ideas and people say out for a walk or in the shower or whatever, is not to say, therefore, take more showers and take more walks. It's rather to point to an innate capacity of the human mind that you already have that you've been overlooking until now. So that's the first step. It's like once people are like, oh yeah, I do have that innate capacity. The question then becomes, all right, how do we leverage that to make it into a strategic asset in your business in your life?

SPEAKER_00 9:42

Okay, okay. That that that makes a bit more sense. So talk us through an example of this. Maybe sort of a client that you've worked with and how it is that you've implemented that.

SPEAKER_02 9:52

Yeah, great. I'll give you great examples. So I have a client called uh Ian who runs a business doing basically work for heritage properties in the UK. So it's a UK company. Um, and he came to me because he was feeling stuck. He was feeling stuck in his business, in his relationships, all that sort of stuff. So we're doing this session together. And uh he he we're about, he he'd read my books and stuff. That's how he'd hired and the way we were working is what I call a three, a three-day intensive. So we spend three days together in a beautiful location going deep to do like a year's worth of coaching in three days. So we're about an hour into this session. He goes, Oh, Jamie, Jamie, hang on a second. I'm gonna need a formula for how this is gonna work. And I'm like, oh geez, I haven't got a formula, but let me see what I can do. So he comes to me, I go, okay, here's the formula. Ian plus a misunderstanding equals stuff. You plus a misunderstanding equals stuff. That's the that's that's he's like, oh wow, that that makes sense. I like, oh it gets better. Check this out. I go, you minus a misunderstanding equals clarity, freedom, inspiration, creativity, innovation, confidence, love, purpose, flow. Because he he had said to me that as a young man, he used to be very happy-go-lucky and spontaneous and uh creative and that sort of thing. And as he'd been running his business, he'd got like one of those furrowed brows, and he was it was more and more intense and all that sort of stuff. And he just wanted that spontaneity and freedom back. And it's like it's there within you. The only thing getting in the way of it is a fundamental misunderstanding of how your experience is being created. So he's like, makes total sense. Let's go. So we worked on that for three days. And my my usual approach, Richard, is at the start of one of those sessions, we'll make a laundry list of what does the person want. And you know, if I could wave a magic wand for coming out of this session, you could have things however you want them to be. How would you know? So we spent a bunch of time on that. He had the laundry list. At the end of the session, like beginning, usually the beginning of the third day, we go back to the laundry list and list and say, How's it looking? So we pull out his laundry list. Every single thing on the list, either the problem no longer existed, or he knew exactly what he was going to do about it, or he uh he uh didn't know what he was gonna do, but he knew that the answer was just wait and wait for the right answer to come. So he had a completely different sense of what was possible because what he'd experienced was this this is kind of cheesy way of putting it, was an upgrade to his mind, right? Not an upgrade that I'd installed, rather an upgrade that was already there, waiting to happen, that had been uh kind of paved over with all the habitual thinking he'd been doing. So that's my that's my basic approach is I know that every single one of my clients has that upgrade capacity, and all I need to do is work with them to create the space for it to uh upgrade. Now, here's the interesting thing. We did that session, then it goes off on his merry way. His business over the subsequent years uh doubled more than doubled in turnover and profitability, happy, fulfilled, started another business on the side. So, like just so much more capacity just by getting in touch with that source. Because here's the funny thing, Richard. Often when I'm working with an entrepreneur who's feeling stuck or something like that, I'll say, well, what first inspired you to start your business? And they'll tell me a story, and they'll tell me back when they first started, they had nowhere near the experience or knowledge or anything like that. But they had this sense of something that was possible and they took risks and they were willing to, you know, uh uh uh improvise and all this sort of stuff. And then, you know, five years in or 10 years in or whatever, and everything's kind of uh uh process driven and habitual, and they got it, it's almost like they've this is not everyone will be like this, but often it's almost like people have accidentally built a prison for themselves that they're then having, or a hamster wheel that they're then having to operate within. And it's like, hang on a second. And here's the funny thing they assume the thing that's giving them success and security and meaning is what they've created. And I'm like, no, it's where it came from, it's what what it created it in the first place. So they're confusing it, they're putting their they're putting the value on what they've built rather than what built it.

SPEAKER_00 14:40

Yeah. So in some cases, it sounds like your work is about getting people back to basics.

SPEAKER_02 14:45

In many ways, I think that's the case. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 14:48

Powerful stuff. Um and as we've said before, it's in some respects, it's counterintuitive for people, isn't it? Because they think I've got to be doing something more complex, I've got to be doing more. Uh, and as you say, it sounds as though in a lot of cases it's it's there, it's just tapping into that and channeling that.

SPEAKER_02 15:07

Well, and the funny thing is, Richard, the the kind of the proof of this is all around us. Like it's funny, there's a uh a Harvard Business Review article by three researchers, uh, Petty, Hirschbergen, and Caleb, I think they're called, uh, did this study. They looked at over 700 senior executives in companies around the world. And they did something very simple with them. They just showed them a chart with different states of mind on it, like calm, happy, energized, euphoric, uh, sad, um, stressed, frustrated, angry, uh, miserable, despair, you know, the a full range of things. And they they just asked them a very simple question. They asked, When do you perform at your best? Okay. And again and again and again, what they found like over 90, 93% or something, said they performed at their best when they were calm, happy, and energized. Okay, so that's a state of mind. And not only did they perform at their best, their teams performed at their best when the leader was calm, happy, and energized, because this stuff's infectious, right?

SPEAKER_01 16:18

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 16:19

They then found that the they performed at their worst when they were frustrated, anxious, tired, and stressed. Okay. And not only did they perform at their worst, their teams picked up on that as well. And their teams performed worse, and it drove uh negative results. So often people would do things that gave a short-term boost but actually screwed things up long-term and that sort of thing. So the the day when I speak to executives, I'll show them uh what I call the impact elevator, and I'll just show them this list of states and say, show me where you spend most of your time. And based on that, I can predict exactly what kind of results they'll be getting. Because here's the funny thing, Richard. Everyone who's feeling frustrated, angry, tired, uh, anxious, tired, and stressed goes, oh, well, it's because of the way things are going that I'm feeling like so. They blame their state of mind on what is happening in their business. In other words, if it's not the happy life, it'll be fine. But actually, it's it's a bad starting yourself. Yeah. And yet the path to moving to a business where you're operating from calm, happy, energized isn't fix everything, then you get to be calm, happy, energized. It's find your way to those states of mind, and then everything starts to fix itself.

SPEAKER_00 17:37

That makes a lot of sense. And it's it sounds like it's almost as prioritizing that. If that if that is the key to unlocking your performance, your team's performance, it's prioritizing that more rather than that being something that gets deferred and all these other things will be fixed.

SPEAKER_02 17:52

It's funny you say that. You know, when people are often I'll like I'll do a keynote or something, and people go, Well, what should we do? So what's the next step? I'll say, okay. Well, step number one is you got to decide whether what I'm saying makes sense or not. You got to decide for yourself. So my assertion, Richard, is uh your experience is being created from the inside out 100% of the time, no exceptions. I'll give you a simple example of this. Little kids have teddy bears or security blankets, and it genuinely seems to the little kid like their feelings of security and well-being are coming from the bear or the rabbit or the security blanket. But we adults know 100% of those feelings of well-being and comfort and security, they're coming from within the child. Zero is coming from the blanket or the bear. There's no special feeling-emitting diodes in there. It's zero is coming from the blanket. 100% is coming from the kid. We get that. And when the kid leaves the bear at a hotel when you're traveling or something and starts freaking out, we know that 100% of the freakout is coming from the child as well. It's not a bear deficiency. It's a it's the child's own upset is creating it. So we get that. And yet, as adults, how often do we fall for the adult teddy bears of bank balances, uh, success, uh, relationships, uh, all the different things that we can attach our security and well-being uh to. And I'm not saying we shouldn't like those things. Like whatever you like, enjoy whatever you enjoy, pursue whatever you want to pursue. But once you realize that 100% of your security, well-being, confidence, clarity, meaning, purpose comes from within and not from out there, it's a game changer. So step one, you gotta decide whether what I'm saying makes sense or not. And if you if you decide it doesn't make sense, then no further action needed. Step two, and this is the crucial one, you gotta decide does it stand to reason that your life would be sweeter if you knew this? Like if if you were operating less in misunderstanding and more in the in the fact of how your experience is created and what you've got going for you, does it stand to reason that life would improve and your results would improve and your ex your relationships would improve and all that sort of stuff? And if the answer to that's no, then again, no further action needed. But if the answer to that is yes, then the third step is really simple. Make it a priority. Now, for different people, make it a priority will mean different things. For some people, make it a priority means they read one of my books or they listen to a podcast. For someone else, make it a priority might mean they hire me, or they, you know, spend weeks studying this or whatever. You or for someone else, make it a priority means might mean they say, you know what, I'm just gonna go for a walk every morning because that's when I get my best ideas. So make it a priority, basically, because here's the thing, Richard. We live in a semantic environment that is inundating us with messages that it works the other way around. Every advertiser on the planet, uh, and the the advertising industry has paid billions to convince us that we would have better levels of authenticity, confidence, well-being, sex appeal if we only used this cologne, bought a Rolex, uh, wore this aftershave or whatever. That's feeding into our semantic environment, but not only the advertising industry, teachers, parents, priests, friends, and our own nervous system reinforce that illusion. So it's no small thing to make a decision to put attention on how it actually works rather than how it looks. And I'll give you a simple metaphor for this. For most of human history, people believed that the sun went round the earth. Why? Because it looks like it does, right? You can watch it every day. It really looks like the sun goes around the earth. But it has never worked that way, ever. The sun hasn't gone around the earth even once. 100% of the time, the earth was going around the sun, but it created the illusion that the sun was going around the earth. Well, my assertion is 100% of the time your experience is being created from within. No exceptions, but our nervous system creates the illusion that it comes from out. And there's just so much evidence backing this up. Like you could find examples every day. But that's so people need to decide: does this make sense? Would life be sweeter if I was operating more in alignment with how reality actually works rather than an illusion? And then step three, if yes, to both of those, make it a priority.

SPEAKER_00 22:53

Makes a lot of sense. I I guess a lot of people, even if they know that on some level, find it quite hard to let go of the tried and trusted path. I'm guessing something like maybe you could run it as an experiment for a few weeks. Just to test it for yourself. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 23:11

Yeah, for sure. But also just doing running the logical path of it. Because a lot of times people have exceptions. Like they'll say, are you really telling, are you really telling me that if I went bankrupt, I might not be miserable anyway, right? Well, funnily enough, I saw a video of Ray Dalio, and he was, I can't remember where I saw it, but he said he said he saw something very, very interesting. He said, Because I work with you know different people in different stages of business, so I sometimes see people who go bankrupt and they go through a very similar process each time. At first, they're terrified, and it's like the worst thing that could ever happen. And then one, a few weeks, typically a few weeks afterwards, when they're kind of out of the shell shock of it, he said, they've got way more peace of mind, they're more connected to the people in their life and that sort of thing. Well, that's not that's not because bankruptcy is so great. It can be horrific. It's because often all the thinking they'd had going on suddenly falls away. It's interesting. I was uh I was brought on Sky Sports, uh Skybreaking News, it's a UK TV show, um, a few years back because the England cricket captain, he was there, there was news that he might be about to announce his uh that he was resigning, right? And so he did in fact do that. And then as soon as he announced the decision, he said, I just feel so much better. Well, all that had changed was he was no longer thinking about all the stuff he was having to deal with, but he was attributing it to he changed his job situation. This is classic. People do it, people people listening will have their own examples of this. Yeah, by all means, put it to the test. Yeah, yeah, 100%.

SPEAKER_00 24:55

Yeah, I think that's a that's that's a really really good example, isn't it? And and I guess some of this is is is really um almost stands akin to mindfulness. In other words, it's you choosing where you put your where you put your attention and actually recognizing what gives you intrinsic value rather than sleep walking through life.

SPEAKER_02 25:17

It is it it really is, Richard. And I I'll give you an example that'll be kind of interesting. Like my assertion is that what we're talking about here is actually principles, like fundamental principles, like gravity is a principle, right? Now, if you use the example of gravity, you you were born into gravity, right? You didn't know anything about it when you were born, but you started learning about it automatically, learning from the implications of gravity, from the moment you were born, from the dribble running down your face to your first attempts to push a plate off a table or to get up and walk or whatever. And for the first five, six, seven years of your life, you're on a gravity crash course. And now, today, you use your embodied understanding of gravity a thousand times a day without even thinking about it, without even having to think about it. So it's automatic utilization. Different example, if we take germs, germs are a pre-existing fact, but until uh a little over a hundred years ago, no one knew about them. No one knew that they were relevant. But today, every adult knows that germs are important, and you know, you gotta wash your hands before you eat dinner, and if you drop a sandwich on the floor, you got three seconds to pick it up and all that kind of stuff. Well, someone taught you to get visibility of, I'll give you an example. I was uh one of my clients, she uh at the time had a four-year-old daughter, and she went to school one day, and her teacher said, Today we're gonna learn about germs. And she got two of the kids and she put glitter on their hands, you know, that glitter little hands and then goes, let's see where the glitter is at the end of the day. Well, at the end of the day, where's the glitter? Everywhere, every kid, every surface, everywhere up to four feet tall, right? And the teacher goes, That's what germs are like, except you can't see them. So she had taught those kids to get eyes for something that was already there, but that had been invisible to them. And as soon as she did, they went on an automatic learning curve. So we went on an automatic learning curve with gravity, because it's obvious you can't miss it. We went on an automatic learning curve with germs once people had given us eyes for it. So my job, Richard, is to give people eyes for something that's invisible, but that's playing out every single second of every single day. Because here's why. Once you get eyes for it, you go on an automatic learning curve and you implement it automatically. So, like mindfulness, it takes things off your mind and allows you to pay attention to what matters. But unlike mindfulness, you don't need to spend 20 minutes practicing it every day. It's not that kind of thing, it's an automatic learning curve. All there will be people listening to this, of I don't know how many listeners you've got, but some people listening to this podcast will already have had some kind of aha that has them go, oh, holy shit, that's true, that will start working for them every single day. It's start as soon as you've had one of those insights, it starts rolling out automatically. So there's a way in which my work with uh individuals, with leaders, with groups, with teams is to create the conditions for them to have those one, two, three, four, five, ten insights that change their life.

SPEAKER_00 28:36

Yeah. And and and a lot of it sounds like it's almost looking for the thing that's hardened in clients like it's it's really.

SPEAKER_02 28:44

It really is. It's it's sort of like you know, those magic eye drawings that were very popular in like the early 90s. Yeah, yeah. You would be look you'd see people going, oh, and you look at it and it's just a bunch of wavy lines, and then if you have your eyes, but all of a sudden, boom, there it is. Well, this is like that. What I'm suggesting is there's something that's already there. And once you got eyes for it, it'll make you laugh. You'll be like, how does not everyone know this? How is this not so obvious? Uh, but it's it's because it's uh even though it's there, we haven't been taught to have eyes for it. We haven't been taught to see it, to connect with it, to click with it, and to work with it. Yeah, so that's kind of my job is basically to point at that thing and go, yeah, yeah, just squint your eyes a little bit. There you go. And then once people see it, they're off to the races.

SPEAKER_00 29:33

Love it, love it. And and you mentioned that you um over the years you take this out to the coaching community, you take it out to the psychotherapy community. Have have they all been open to it? Because I can imagine some of them are quite protective of their fiefdoms and probably quite resistant to it.

SPEAKER_02 29:49

Well, well, yeah, have they all is a big word. What uh uh I've uh I've got a lot of coaches, a lot of therapists, a lot of uh psychotherapists, psychiatrists and uh uh people from doctors and so on in my client base. But what I find with this is that it's less about fiefdoms, it's more about to to see something that's already true about the way you work. You gotta be willing to let go of some old ideas about how the world works. Um, and so, but I mean, I was I was the same, to be honest, Richard. I first came across this in 1999, and I was given a book about this particular understanding, written by a guy called Sidney Banks, who was uh the guy who first kind of clocked onto it. And I read that and I was like, no, it's too simplistic, and I already know this anyway, and blah, blah, blah, blah. So I couldn't see it. And then when I came back to it again, I read another book and I was like, there's something here, but I can't tell what it is. But there's something, it's doing something, but I can't tell what it is. And I had to get to a point of kind of reasonableness, but I had to kind of be beaten into a state of reasonableness because before I would have eyes for it. So in my case, it was going a whistler and thinking I was going for my big victory lap, and it turned out not to work. I'm like, okay, there's something wrong with your game plan for living. It's just like, even though I've been successful in lots of ways, it wasn't delivering the goods in the ways that I wanted it to. And I it's funny, Richard, I've worked with so many entrepreneurs who have gone for exits or whatever and assumed life finally life was gonna be giving, and they're shocked that it's you know, they have 24 hours of euphoria, and then they're like, oh, it's the same as the day before now. And so that this is a real game changer for people because they discover that what they've been looking for is already there within them. Here's the other thing you often find. People will say, Oh, but if I believed I already had that stuff within me, then why would I be motivated to do anything? It's like, well, actually, you'd be motivated to do it for the same reason you were in the first place. You the reason you created what you want to create is because of things that matter to you, like freedom, like creating things, like contribution, like making a difference, all that sort of stuff. That stuff's still there because that's there in the domain of making things happen. It's just you're not being driven by a lie about where your happiness, where your fulfillment, where your well-being, where your peace of mind is gonna come from.

SPEAKER_00 32:27

Yeah. And I guess a lot of a lot of those things, there's a there's an end point. I guess what you're talking about, it's uh it's an on-going process, potentially, isn't it? That actually the things that you you you actually really value, you continue to value, continue to pursue in other aspects of your life.

SPEAKER_02 32:42

Yeah, absolutely. Uh and one of the places this really plays out is in relationships because I know, especially when people are really busy and have a lot on their plate and that sort of thing, relationships are often the things that take the tone of relationships with partner, relationships with kids, and that sort of thing. One of the things that this that sort of an unexpected side benefit for a lot of my corporate clients is they're like, oh, my uh my primary relationships have improved. My uh my relationships with my kids are getting better. There's more uh more enjoyment and freedom in that domain. So it's uh I the nice thing about discovering something that's at play in every aspect of your life is that as you start to get the benefits of it, those benefits roll out of every area of your life.

SPEAKER_00 33:31

That's and I think that's that's particularly exciting part of it, isn't it? That actually the benefits are quite narrow. They're all all encompassing, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 33:40

Yeah, they really are. They really are.

SPEAKER_00 33:43

That's fascinating stuff. Uh, and and you know, it makes it makes a lot of a lot of sense. What what does the future hold for you? So you do you're doing doing this? Well what what's in the pipeline for you in the future?

SPEAKER_02 33:56

Well, so how it looks to me, there's a quote by a guy called D. Ward Hawk, who was the founder of Visa. Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_00 34:05

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 34:06

And he said uh something along the lines of we're at that very point in history where a 400-year-old age is dying and a new one is struggling to be born. Uh he says, ahead, uh, the possibility of regeneration of art and culture and science and medicine and relationship with each other and with the natural world and with the divine intelligence, like the world has never seen before. I read that 30 years ago and I was like, that sounds pretty great. That's something worth heading for. Well, now I look, you know, where are we? 2026. I look at the way the world is unfolding and AI and technology. There's another quote by uh uh Edward O. Wilson. You'll have heard this one. He said, uh, he said that humanity's problem is we've got Paleolithic emotions, uh, medieval institutions, and godlike technologies. So we're in the age of those godlike technologies. And as you see, with the widespread tribalism, we're still in the grip of Paleolithic emotions. But here's the thing: we don't have Paleolithic emotions. We've got a medieval understanding of our emotions. All right, our emotion, there's nothing wrong with our emotions. The issue is we have a fundamental misunderstanding of how our psychological and emotional system works. And to be clear, Richard, psychology is in its pre-paradigm phase. There's like 800 different schools of psychology. It's why it's not considered a hard science because they don't know what the principles are. But my assertion is that what we've got a hold of here are principles for psychology. And so you ask what I'm up to. It looks to me uh like it looks to me like what Hawk said is right. Ahead is the possibility of a beautiful future, an abundant future for humanity, uh, where we kind of wake up from a lot of the nonsense that's been going on in the past, right? But it's not a dead cert. And it looks to me like, okay, there's this beautiful future over there, but between here and there, there's a rope bridge. And it's like an Indiana Jones rope bridge with missing slats and irons, arrows flying by and all that sort of stuff. And on one side of it is catastrophe, whether it's you know, climate crisis or bioweapons or nuclear war or uh our robot order overlords or whatever. That's a real possibility. Like that's way off non-zero. On the other side of the road bridge, dystopia, authoritarianism, social control, all that sort of stuff. And whether we realize it or not, we're all walking across that road ridge right now. And it looks to me like we've got a we've got habits of thinking and understanding that have evolved for a linear world. You know, for most of human history, we never traveled more than a few miles from where we were born unless we were nomadic. And even then, linear thinking was good enough. You know, what's gonna get me to that mountain over there and that sort of thing. But now we've got uh digital machines which are exponential, and we need a mode of thinking that can keep pace with the exponential age that we're living in. So, what I'm doing now is basically doing whatever I can do to help anyone who wants to listen get across that road bridge and get connect with this upgrade for the mind, which allows us to make decisions that can keep pace with the speed and development of AI.

SPEAKER_00 37:37

It's exciting stuff, and and I guess in essence, what you're saying is we haven't even scratched the surface in terms of what we came about as humans, and it's really about not even close, gaining more understanding and learning how to channel that and leverage it.

SPEAKER_02 37:52

Absolutely hard agree. Brilliant, fantastic.

SPEAKER_00 37:57

And if people want to find out more about your work, where can they go?

SPEAKER_02 38:00

Uh easiest place is jamysmart.com. That's my website. My books are on Amazon, my podcasts are in the podcast network. Uh, the Get Clarity Podcast may be of interest to people. Um, I've got a YouTube channel and all the usual stuff, but jamysmart.com is my main uh my main place. Oh, and I'm on LinkedIn too.

SPEAKER_00 38:19

Brilliant.

SPEAKER_02 38:19

Any final thoughts that you want to leave the listeners with today? Um, well, here's here's a way of thinking about it, just as a simple takeaway. I I like the the snow globes. You know, if you shake up a snow globe, there's all snow flying around and that sort of thing. But if you hold it still, all the snow kind of settles uh and clarity emerges because clarity's water's natural state, right? That's its natural state. And that happens because of the principle of gravity. So it's not an accident that it falls to the bottom, but that's gravity. It's not an accident that the water clears, it's water's natural state. Well, clarity is your mind's natural state, it's your natural state. The issue isn't that you don't have that, you do have that. The issue is that you've been taught a misunderstanding of your mind and who you really are that perpetually fills it up. You know, I I speak to so many people these days, Richard, who are have too much on their mind and they're overthinking and that sort of thing. So basically, I teach uh a simple understanding that takes things off your mind automatically. So you have more freedom, space, and confidence to do what you want to do. So that's my parting thought, really. It's you've already got this, you've already got it within you. You just need to learn how to use it.

SPEAKER_00 39:44

Jamie Smart, it's been a fantastic conversation. So thank you for your time. And we'd love to have you back on again in the future.

SPEAKER_02 39:51

Anytime you like, Richard, it's been a huge presuper.

SPEAKER_03 39:55

Thank you. This is the business of thinking. Mastery doesn't end here. See you in the next episode.